Arbor gate plans

[Jack Wood]

Hi, I want to replace my walk through chainlink gate with an Arbor style gate. Has anyone done this and if so where did you get the plan if you used one? And what am I looking at cost wise? I would like to use redwood or western cedar, treated seems to twist after it's been up awhile. Thanks!:)

[Jamie Buxton]

I've built a few gates. Unfortunately no pix, but here's some thoughts....


* Use dry lumber, not construction stuff. For instance, don't use pressure-treat. Dry lumber will warp less than green. And with dry lumber you can do high-quality joinery which is going to last.
* In my area (N. CA), dry western red cedar is less expensive and better quality than redwood. Considering that redwood grows here, I'll bet that goes double in the rest of the country. I buy dry clear vertical grain rough-sawn full-dimension 2x6 for about $4 bdft. For plywood I use T111 "cedar" panels intended for exterior walls. I say "cedar" because that's what it looks like, but it doesn't smell like it, so I suspect it is something else.
* I use joinery like a front door -- deep mortise&tenons. I use epoxy on the glue faces, and cedar-colored caulk on the shoulders. My hope is that the caulk will prevent water from wicking into the joint. Because I build the gate like a door, it looks as good from the house as it does from the street -- unlike most gates.
* I design the gate and joints to avoid having holes looking upwards where water could collect. For instance, I don't use mortises which look upward. Instead I reverse the joint so that the tenon looks upward. Sometimes this requires gluing in a loose tenon, but I can glue it in and seal it very carefully before I do the big glue-up on other components.

[Jamie Buxton]

Well, okay, I found a photo of a gate I built a couple years ago. Sorry it isn't a great photo. The gate itself is about 6 feet tall and 40" wide. It is made of dry western red cedar, and "cedar" T111 plywood. The gate posts are green redwood cladding over pressure-treated fir. The pressure-treated stuff goes into the ground, and I clad it with prettier wood after the posts were set. You can barely see the bronze screws I used to hold the redwood on. The lintel is also redwood, screwed together with the same bronze screws.

[Jack Wood]

Wow that is a very nice gate! It shows that you've built a few of these.:) This gives me a direction to head in. I have a feeling that your big home improvements don't cary this grade of lumber so I will call around for some. THANKS!

[Jamie Buxton]

Wow that is a very nice gate! It shows that you've built a few of these.:) This gives me a direction to head in. I have a feeling that your big home improvements don't cary this grade of lumber so I will call around for some. THANKS!

Yeah, I don't think the big DIY places carry this class of lumber. The ones in my area certainly don't. Of the real lumber dealers, perhaps half of them handle dry western red cedar. Phoning around would be a good idea.

[fRED mCnEILL]

I built my driveway gayes using 2x6 construction lumber. The gates (2) are 4 ft high and 7 feet wide. I used a method of construction that I found in a recent FWW magazine for building doors. The method of construction is to build the door(gate) in 3 layers. The 2 outer layers sandwich the inner layer in a manner that creates LARGE mortise and tenons. They are extremely solid and have shown NO movement dimension wise.

The gates have been up for 3 years and although its time to re-stain them, they are holding up well structure-wise. We live in Vancouver, B.C. so our rainy climate is not kind to outdoor wood construction.

Using construction lumber (untreated)kept my cost to under $100 for each wing.

Good Luck

Fred Mc.